Campaign of the Month:
September 2013

Heroes Unchained

Aspects

Description

Aspects are characteristics of player characters that motivate and propel them to action. During character creation, you should define a minimum of three Aspects to your character. They should be specific and deeply personal for the character.

Ideas to fuel your character’s aspects might include:

A passionate love

A burning desire for revenge against an individual

Extreme hatred

Faith in one or more Passions

A strong sense of personal honor

Loyalty to an ideal, a country, a person, etc.

Driven toward some task of importance

Destiny – can be specific or even a bit arcane

Any aspect must be applicable to a person, place or thing, as if they were emotional threads connecting the character to the world around them. The aspect may also be time-bound, but this is not required.

One or more aspects may be used in a given situation. Likewise, it is possible that a character may be confronted with a situation where their aspects conflict. Should the character choose to pursue one aspect that conflicts with another, the other aspect has been placed in crisis, and must be repaired before it can be used again. This usually requires some kind of Deed.

Mechanics

Whenever a character encounters a situation where one or more aspects are triggered, they may spend a single karma point for each aspect triggered on the Action Test for any action that furthers the character in pursuing that aspect. This can stack with discipline talents or talents that require karma use.

When reaching the climax of an Aspect’s focus, a character’s karma pool becomes “unlocked”, allowing them to burn as much karma as they desire on relevant actions (based on GM approval).

When a character is faced with a situation where two or more of their aspects conflict, and chooses a course of action that violates one or more of those aspects, the violated aspects are placed in crisis and can no longer benefit the character until, typically, they have performed a Deed of some kind to remedy the situation. Multiple violated aspects will require their own Deeds to rehabilitate each aspect.

Examples

Bob’s Windling Elementalist, named Broome, has the aspect Loyalty:To his Mentor Sham’Sin.

Whilst traveling in the woods with his mentor, the pair run across a Jehuthra. Intent on having a good meal, the Jehuthra attacks the larger of the two snacks, Sham’Sin. Broome eagerly attacks with spells in an attempt to save his mentor from the voracious Jehuthra. Because of his Loyalty Aspect, Bob may chose to spend an extra Karma on all of Broome’s Action Test roles made against the Jehuthra while trying to protect Sham’Sin from being eaten.